Paris-area Jewish school receives hate mail

Jewish school south of Paris sent letters celebrating the Holocaust. "Death to Jews" painted on fence of synagogue in separate incident.

Ben Ariel, 27/02/19 04:32

Protest against anti-Semitism in Paris

Reuters

Statements celebrating the Holocaust were sent in a letter to a Jewish school south of Paris and, separately, the words “death to Jews” were painted on the fence of a synagogue north of the city, JTA reported on Tuesday.

In the letter to the school on Montrouge, the authors wrote “Arab countries would have lived in peace if Adolf Hitler finished exterminating all the Jews” and “France is a rear base of Zionism in Europe.

Police are investigating the incident.

Separately, according to JTA, police are also looking into the spraying of graffiti last week on a wall of the synagogue in the Val-de-Marne area southeast of Paris. The graffiti also featured the acronym LDNA, which is used by the militant group known as Black African Defense League.

The two incidents are the latest in a string of anti-Semitic incidents in France over the past few weeks, including the daubing of swastikas on nearly 100 graves in a Jewish cemetery in eastern France last Tuesday.

A week prior, a memorial in Paris to Ilan Halimi, a French-born Moroccan Jewish man who was murdered in 2006, was desecrated.

Twice that week, swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti were found at multiple locations in Paris, including the window of a bagel shop and mailboxes which featured the portrait of French politician and Holocaust survivor Simone Veil.

Earlier this month, French authorities reported a 74 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2018 over the previous year.